Which Countries Go Green? An Access Point Theory of Democratic Institutions and Environmental Regulations

Abstract

The amount of environmental regulation varies across countries but, despite the increasing importance of the environment, previous research has provided few answers why. Building upon recent scholarship on democratic institutions, this article explores this variation within democracies by applying Access Point Theory to environmental policy. The basic hypothesis of the article is that the more access points - policymakers who can be lobbied - that a country has, the less environmental regulation there should be. This is because increasing the number of access points decreases the costs of lobbying due to competitive pressure between the access points. Industries opposed to environmental regulation will be better able to take advantage of cheaper lobbying because of their greater ability to overcome the collective action problem resulting from the concentrated costs of regulation. This hypothesis is tested on panel data for post-World War II developed democracies using environmental treaties as a proxy for domestic regulation.